Grimace

Membrana Vol. 2, no. 1
2017

editorial

One of the most privileged and complex motives in the history of photography is the human face. Not only that – it has always been a heavily contested landscape, deeply invested in the aesthetic and ideological struggles concerning the nature of human beings, social class as well as its proper representation through the medium of photography. Photographs of the face, sometimes even understood as the “windows to the soul”, capture and freeze the otherwise fleeting extremes of facial expressions – the grimaces – the contortions, convulsions of the faces as the material tokens of joy, fear, and pain. By doing that, photography sets free “the optical unconsciousness” of the human face. Framing the grimaced face in the pictorial plane, photography at the same time frees it from its direct relation to the present and subjugates it through its photographic and ideological conventions (scientific and aesthetic apparatuses). The photographs of (grimaced) faces are nowadays ubiquitous and yet at the same time still bear the power of the uncanny, as if the incessant reproduction has never fully depleted its meaning nor blunted its unsettling – either ecstatic or thrilling – force.

Authors

Anne Noble, Asko Lehmuskallio, Devon Schiller, Geoffrey Batchen, Ilija T. Tomanić, Iza Pevec, Jan Babnik, Jasna Jernejšek, John Hillman, Lara Plavčak, Matej Sitar, Miha Colner, Monika Schwarzler, Paula Horta, Robbie Cooper, Robert Hariman, Witold Kanicki

Content

Vol. 2, no. 1
2017
06/08/2020

Book Review

The Bone Algorithm

Spirit is a Bone by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Jasna Jernejšek

Vol. 2, no. 1
2017
06/08/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m2.036.rev

5 min.

Facial recognition technology, which seeks to identify the shape of the skull beneath the skin and tissue of the face, is based on the assumption that it can be anything that occurs on the surface of the face, a potential camouflage, while the bone structure underneath it is impossible or at least very difficult to transform.

Jasna Jernejšek (born 1982) holds a BA in Cultural Studies and an MA in Media and Communication Studies from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Since 2012 she is an editor of radio programme on contemporary visual arts Art-Area at Radio Student. She is a regular contributor to Fotografija magazine. Since 2013 she collaborates as project manager and curator with gallery Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography and with festival Photonic Moments – Month of Photography. She lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Vol. 2, no. 1
2017
06/08/2020

Book Review

Indian Posthumous Portraits

MAA by Federico Carpani & Indra Kumar Jha

Jasna Jernejšek

Vol. 2, no. 1
2017
06/08/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m2.038.rev

5 min.

The usual practice of portraying the dead before cremation at Manikarnika Ghat becomes an indicator of the unusual and exotic Indian culture, and although taking posthumous portraits has a long and continuous tradition in the Western world, we seemed to have forgotten about this art form.

Vol. 2, no. 1
2017
06/08/2020

Review

Dark Premonitions of the Anthropocene Era

Peter Koštrun, Photographer and Visual Artist

Miha Colner

Vol. 2, no. 1
2017
06/08/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m2.042.rev

9 min.

The author places his own decision to withdraw to the outskirts into his relationship with the world and keeps returning to his authorial treatment of various peripherals, physical or mental. Even though his works, because of their motifs, often pass into the realm of the sublime, they nevertheless very realistically discuss nature, which has, even after all the interventions during the anthropocene era, managed to withhold and survive.

Although the interpretations of Koštrun’s works and his entire opus are undeniably multifaceted and open to different interpretations and readings, the article suggests that all his word does share a common meditative stillness and sense of solitariness. Peter Koštrun’s opus lingers on the intersection of pristine nature and cultural landscape, on the intersection of the impact of humans on the environment and the insignificance of the individual in relation to nature. Even if Koštrun’s photographic motifs allude to archaism and romanticism, and are at first glance connected to the tradition of photographic pictorialism, they are in their essence distinctly modern, attached to the reality of the here and now. His expression is completely non-narrative in the classic sense of photographic representation, as the images do not tell a linear story, but are dedicated to visual language, which is (as opposed to the written word) always ambivalent and layered.

Keywords: Anthropocene, landscape, melancholy, mortality, nature photography

Miha Colner (born 1978) has graduated from Art History and works as a freelance curator and art critic. Colner works as a curator and programme coordinator at the International Centre of Graphic Arts / Svicarija Creative Centre in Ljubljana. He is also active as a publicist, specialised in photography, printmaking, artists’ moving image and various forms of (new) media art. In the period 2006-2016 he was a curator at Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography, Ljubljana. Since 2005 he has been a contributor of newspapers, magazines, specialist publications, and his personal blog, as well as part-time lecturer. In 2006, he became a member of the project group Station DIVA at the SCCA Institute in Ljubljana, which is creating an archive and conducts research on Slovenian video art. In 2007, he co-curated and co-organized Break 2.4 festival, held biannually by K6/4 Institute. Since 2005, he has also worked as an art critic and a regular member of the cultural department at Radio Študent – he is an editor of the show on contemporary art Art-Area. He is also a regular external contributor to the daily newspaper Dnevnik and to the magazines Fotografija and Art-Words. He occasionally contributes to other specialist magazines on fine art and music, such as Maska, Forum, Časopis za kritiko znanosti, Flash, Folio, Zarez, Art Kontura, Frakcija (Croatia), Foto dokumenti (Serbia), Flaneur, Cluster (Great Britain), and Sculpture Network (USA).

He lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

http://mihacolner.com
http://www.mglc-lj.si

Peter Koštrun (1979, Ljubljana, Slovenia) graduated from Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where he currently teaches at the Department of Photography. He has been exhibiting at home as well as abroad since 2003. Koštrun is a master of landscape photography known for his depiction of empty and deserted landscapes as well as his refined selection of framing and light. He is less interested in the documentary dimension of the land as he approaches the genre conceptually. His works contain a subtle atmosphere that evokes a feeling of something greateror even immortal. He lives and works in Brnica near Celje. Recent solo exhibitions include Moments, Mottard & Jenray, Liège (2012) in Belgium; The Time is Now, Photo Gallery Lang, Samobor in Crotatia (2012), Singularity, Photon Gallery in Vienna, Austra (2014) and Premonition, Center for Contemporary Arts Celje, Slovenia (2016). Koštrun has shown his work in many group exhibitions at home and abroad, including Almost Spring, 100 Years of Slovene Art at the Maribor Art Gallery (2012), as well as in one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary landscape photography, Sense of Place at the Bozar Expo in Brussels (2012), and the exhibition Land / City / Real / Imagined at Diemar / Noble Gallery in London (2011). His most recent exhibitions are After all, Cellar Gallery, Kraków, Poland (2016) and Premonition, Photon Gallery Vienna, Austria (2019). Koštrun’s works can be found in the Essl collection in Vienna and in the collection of the Cabinet of Slovenian Photography in the Museum of Gorenjska in Kranj.

impressum

MEMBRANA 2 / 2017 • ISSN 2463-8501 • https://doi.org/10.47659/m2

publisher: Membrana, Maurerjeva 8, 1000 Ljubljana • tel.: +386 (0) 31 777 959
editorial board: Jan Babnik (editor-in-chief), Ilija T. Tomanić, Lenart Kučić, Emina Djukić • advisory board: Mark Curran, Murat Germen, Witold Kanicki, Ana Peraica, Iza Pevec, Matej Sitar • assistances to editorial team: Iza Pevec, Vanja Žižić
contributors of articles: Jan Babnik, Geoffrey Batchen, Miha Colner, Robbie Cooper, Robert Hariman, John Hillman, Paula Horta, Jasna Jernejšek, Asko Lehmuskallio, Anne Noble, Ana Peraica, Iza Pevec, Lara Plavčak, Devon Schiller, Monika Schwärzler, Matej Sitar, Ilija T. Tomanić
translations: Tom Smith • proofreading: Tom Smith
contributors of images: Uroš Abram, Alejandro Almaraz, Maurizio Anzeri, Aleš Beno, Diego Beyro, Nancy Burson, Federico Carpani & Indra Kumar Jha, Tadas Cerniauskas, Matej Družnik, Jillian Edelstein, Chamblis Giobbi, Heinrich Hoffman, Moa Karlberg, Jure Kastelic, Peter Koštrun, Borut Krajnc, Simon Menner, Anne Noble, Primož Predalič, Urša Premik, Carlo Van de Roer
design: Primož Pislak, LUKS Studio
printing: R-Tisk • print-run: 500

all images and texts © Membrana, except when noted otherwise • editorial photograph: Jure Kastelic, from the series Death Reporters, 2009–, courtesy of the author • last page image from: Richer, Paul Marie Louis Pierre, 1881. Etudes cliniques sur l’hystéro-épilepsie ou grande hystérie. All manuscripts are subject to blind peer review. Manuscripts and portfolios can be send to editors@membrana.si.